‘Intensive work’ continuing to agree multi-year budget for Northern Ireland

Intensive work is continuing to agree a multi-year budget for Northern Ireland, a senior Department of Finance official told MLAs.

Joanne McBurney, deputy secretary of public spending at the department, said she hoped the budget would be agreed “long before” the summer.

The powersharing Executive is due to meet on Thursday to discuss budgetary issues.

Secretary of State Hilary Benn had been invited to the meeting, but it is understood he will not be in Northern Ireland.

Mr Benn is due to hold a virtual meeting with Finance Minister John O’Dowd.

Mr O’Dowd published draft proposals for a multi-year budget in January, but they have not yet been agreed by the powersharing Executive.

In February, the UK Government announced it would make £400 million available from reserves to the Executive to deal with overspend pressures in health and education.

The money has to be repaid over the next three years and the Treasury said it would be conducting an “open-book exercise” looking at the Executive budget.

Ms McBurney told the Finance Committee the open-book exercise had now been shared with Executive ministers.

She said: “It represents high-level Treasury analysis and will be used to inform discussions with the Treasury and the Executive’s own consideration of the budget.”

She added that all Stormont departments were facing “significant pressures”.

Ms McBurney said: “Intensive work is ongoing in relation to the budget.

“The Finance Minister is continuing to engage with the UK Government to make the case for fairer funding for public services and is working in partnership with ministerial colleagues to progress the multi-year budget.”

She said an updated paper had been prepared for consideration at Thursday’s Executive.

Committee chairman Matthew O’Toole asked if the hope was the budget would be agreed on Thursday.

Ms McBurney said: “I haven’t seen the agenda for tomorrow but I would imagine there will be a discussion around the budget, but I don’t know if there will be agreement or not.”

Mr O’Toole said: “I think what people want to know is this going to happen soon? The draft budget was published in January… have there been discussions in the past week about finally signing this thing off?”

Ms McBurney said: “There are ongoing discussions on the budget, that is as much as I can say.

“There are significant issues around the budget, there are significant pressures across all the departments.”

The committee chairman asked if the department was now in “breach of the law” by failing to agree a budget before the beginning of the financial year.

The official said: “The legislation does say that a budget should be brought, but with Executive agreement.

“I think you have to realise the very challenging situation we are in.

“There are immense pressures in health and education, as borne out by the need for a reserve claim this year for those two departments.”

Mr O’Toole asked: “At what point does it become a bit of a crisis in relation to setting a budget?”

Ms McBurney said: “I don’t think you could put an absolute date on it, obviously the sooner we have a budget agreed the better.

“When departments are working without a budget then they don’t have that ability to plan effectively.”

She said departments could keep going until the summer.

She added: “I would hope a budget will be agreed long before then.”

Mr O’Toole described the move to invite Mr Benn to attend Thursday’s Executive meeting as “rather unusual”.

He said: “Rather an unusual thing for a devolved Executive to invite into a devolved Executive meeting a UK minister.”

Mr O’Toole said the committee had previously received a calculation from the think tank Pivotal that Northern Ireland departments could be facing an overspend of £1 billion in the 2026/27 financial year.

Ms McBurney said: “I can’t comment, I haven’t seen Pivotal’s analysis.

“Certainly, if you were to take every department’s bids and take off the allocations we give them, you would get a figure that is far north of £1 billion.”